At the age of 38, the author and her husband adopted an 11 year old boy. During the early years of their life together, the author wrote short vignettes about moments that challenged her assumptions about parenting. Many of the vignettes are reflections on ironic discrepancies between actually being a parent and what she had learned from books and courses. Other vignettes reveal more painful confrontations with some of her deepest assumptions about what it means to parent and to love.
Reflections on Adoption by a Grateful Recovering Know-It-All
is a compilation of these vignettes. In the epilogue the author looks back after more than 30 years as a mother and offers, not advice, but thoughts on several issues she continues to ponder.